Open Source Software Reviews

MySQL is the open source database management system developed, distributed and managed by the company MySQLAB. This DBMS was introduced with the aim of reducing high expenditure of deploying and managing databases.

VNC or Virtual Network Computing is a client server software package for accessing remote network to graphical desktops. TightVNC, a free remote control software package is the enhanced version of VNC software. TightVNC allows the users to view the desktop of a remote machine and control it with local mouse and keyboard.

TightVNC is free software with license from GPL. Since the full source code of the software is available, anybody can use the software by simply downloading it from the Internet.

TightVNC is useful for remote administration, remote customer support, education and many other purposes.

Gaim is an instant messaging client, based on Linux operating system.

Gaim allows its users to access multiple networks simultaneously. The users can login to their multiple accounts at a time. This is the unique and most popular feature of Gaim since the users can access all the instant messenger services at a time. For example – a person is chatting with friends on MSN messenger, and talking to another friend on Yahoo messenger and sitting in an IRC channel simultaneously at the same time.

Though Gaim basically works on Linux platform, it also works well with BSD, Mac OS X and Windows. This software has compatibility with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Group-wise Messenger and Zephyr networks.

Xine is a free, GPL-licensed multimedia playback engine. This high performance software plays back CDs, DVDs and VCDs. It also supports a large number of multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, MP3 etc.

This easy to use and portable Xine software plays multimedia files from local disk drives as well as displays multimedia files streamed over the Internet.

Xine is based on a modular, advanced, multithreaded architecture composed of xine engine, input plugin, output plugin, decoder plugin and post effect plugin.

Xine consists of a number of features :

• Xine is free, fast, portable and reusable
  

MPlayer is a movie and animation player, which runs on a wide range of codecs and file formats including MPEG, DivX, Windows media, Real Audio and Video, QuickTime and Vivo.

A wide range of output drivers supports MPlayer. It works well with X11, Xv, DGA, Open GL, SVGAlib, DirectFB etc. However, other drivers like GGI, SDL, VESA etc. and some low level card-specific drivers like Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI are also supported by MPlayer.
Since most of the drivers support software or hardware scaling, movies can be viewed in full screen with MPlayer. Additionally, MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware, MPEG decoder boards like the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.

C++ is an object oriented programming (OOP) language, which is considered as the best application for creating large-scale applications. The concept of C++ has emerged from its predecessor C (a procedural language), and C++ is treated as the extension of C or the superset of C.

C++ was originally developed by Bjarne Stroustrap in 1986 at AT&T Bell Laboratories, combining the syntactic extension of C and class construct of Simula. The main aim of developing C++ was to enhance the syntax, performance and portability of C. Apart from this, its goal was to provide static type checking, both user-defined and built-in type, obeying identical scope, allocation and naming rules.

C is perhaps the most popular programming language in today’s computer world. This procedural language was developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970’s. Initially, it was designed only for Unix-based systems. However, later it was enhanced for using on different other platforms.

C language has a number of similarities with assembly language and it is often referred as Portable Assembly. C code can be compiled to run on any computer.

C language was developed aiming to write large programs in the procedural programming model with fewer errors.

C language is a simple core language consisting important functionalities like file handlers, math functions etc. It uses the preprocessor language for defining macros and including various source code files. Following are some of the other important features of C:

Mozilla is considered as a wonderful alternate web browser to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Mozilla is free software and can easily be downloaded from Mozilla site.

To speak about the appearance, Mozilla is a simple looking clear browser. It contains all the features of a modern advanced browser like: security settings, Password protection, download and Cookie managers, multi-language and multi-platform support and the Web Standards.

Apart from these, Mozilla is enriched with a number of special features:

• Tabbed browsing allows to open several pages at once with only one click
  

Apache is one of the widely used web servers on the Internet, developed originally by the Apache group in 1995. This open source HTTP server is Unix-based and supports PERL and PHP languages.

Apache HTTP server is a project supported by Apace Software Foundation (ASF), a non-profit corporation. Their aim was to provide a secure, efficient and extensible HTTP server. Apache server is characterized by a collaborative, consensus based development process with and open and realistic software license from ASF.

Apache contains a number of features ranging from server side programming language support (Perl, Python, PHP) to authentication schemes (mod_access, mod_auth, mod_digest). Other features include SSL and TSL support, proxy module, custom log files, and filtering support. It also contains rewrite engine, a useful URL rewriter.

PHP or Hypertext Preprocessor is a scripting language, which is used especially for web development.

PHP is mainly a server side scripting and can easily be embedded into HTML. Its functionalities resemble with any other CGI programs’ functionalities like collecting form data, generating page content, sending or receiving cookies etc.

PHP dominates in three major sectors like:

• Server Side Scripting - the main field for PHP, where three things are required – PHP parser, web server and a web browser

• Command Line Scripting - for making PHP script run without any server or browser. Only PHP parser is required for this purpose.